Francois-Timoléon de Choisy (1644 - 1724), Part 1: Abbé, diplomat, author, cross-dreamer

Part 1: Life, and the 1695 short-story

Part 2: discussion and bibliography

François-Timoléon was born in August 1644, a week after the Battle of Freiburg which eventually led to the end of the Thirty Years’ War between Europe’s Catholics and Protestants.

François-Timoléon was a grandson of Jean de Choisy Jr. (1562 - 1652), receiver general of finances of Caen. He was the fourth and last son of Jean III from Choisy, lord of Balleroy (1598 -1660), a State Councillor, intendant of Languedoc, chancellor of Gaston d'Orléans, and Jeanne-Olympe Hurault de L'Hospital (1604-1669), a granddaughter of Michel de L'Hospital and an intimate of the Queen of Poland Marie de Gonzague. From the ages of 18 to 22, he studied philosophy and theology at the Sorbonne, and in 1663 became an abbé de cour (a low rank tonsured cleric, not usually connected to an abbey or a religious order, but with a sinecure). His mother’s death in 1669 left him an inheritance which he frittered away in Venice.

He returned impoverished, and lived off his sinecure. In 1676 he visited Rome as a part of the retinue of Emmanuel-Théodose de La Tour d'Auvergne, Cardinal de Bouillon (1643-1715), and was part of the Conclave that elected Pope Innocent XI. After serious illness in August 1683, de Choisy retired for a year to the seminary of Paris Foreign Missions Society, and co-wrote Quatre dialogues. I. Sur l'immortalité de l'âme, II. Sur l'existence de Dieu. III. Sur la providence. IV. Sur la religion. After that, in 1685, he accompanied the Chevalier de Chaumont on a year-long diplomatic mission to the Kingdom of Siam. It was there that he was finally ordained by Louis Laneau, bishop of Métellopolis, envoy of the Paris Foreign Missions Society and Vicar Apostolic of Siam. 

On return to France in June 1686, de Choisy wrote Interprétation des Psaumes avec la Vie de David, and in 1687 was admitted to the Académie Française on 24 July 1687. In 1689 he received the benefit of the priory of Saint-Benoît-du-Sault. From then until his death in 1724, de Choisy wrote a series of hagiographies on French monarchs, histories of France and tracts on Catholic devotions. 

In February 1695 an anonymous short story, a cross-dressing fantasy, Histoire de la marquise-marquis de Banneville, was published in Le Mercure galant, and then an extended version of the same story was published in in the same magazine in August of the next year.

De Choisy was given the deanery of the chapter Bayeux Cathedral, in April 1697.

He died aged 80 in October 1724.

His nephew and executor, the marquis d’Argenson, following his death, found among his papers an apparent autobiography. The manuscript was carefully written (unlike the majority of his other texts, which had been subject to additions and corrections). The document related that, when young, de Croisy had lived as a woman for at least two years in Paris, Bordeaux, and Bourges using three different personas, which he used to seduce young women and even dress them as boys. One result was the fathering a daughter - he paid for the upbringing and education of this child, later arranging a happy match for her. This account was first published as Mémoires de Madame la comtesse des Barres, 1736,

Who wrote La marquise-marquis de Banneville?

Summary of the story :

A young man raised as a woman and a young woman raised as a man. They meet and fall in love, unaware of each other's sex. They marry. On their wedding night, each lover reveals their secret, to their mutual surprise and relief. They decide to keep living in their chosen genders, move to the countryside, and conceive a child, ultimately achieving an unconventional happy ending.

There is obviously a similarity to the Mémoires de Madame la comtesse des Barres, first published 1736.

Three candidates have been proposed as the author of La marquise-marquis de Banneville, either alone or working together:

• Charles Perrault, a major advisor and bureaucrat at the court of Louis XIV who supervised the building of the Louvre and Versailles and wrote fawning biographies of prominent French men. Posterity remembers him for the fairy tales he wrote later in life, Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye (Tales of Mother Goose) which includes "Little Red Riding Hood", "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty", and "Bluebeard".
• Perrault’s niece Marie-Jeanne L'Héritier, who also wrote fairy tales under her own name, and collaborated with her uncle. In her story, Marmoisan, a young woman takes her dead twin brother’s clothing, passes as a man, and becomes a courtier, a soldier, and a lover.
• Francois-Timoléon de Choisy whom Perrault knew in that both were members of theAcadémie Française … and as France’s most famous transvestite??

Scholars disagree about who wrote it:

• Paul Bonnefon, 1906, proposed L'Héritier alone.
• Jeanne Roche-Mazon, 1928, proposed Perrault and de Choisy together,
• Paul Delarue, 1954, proposed Perrault and L'Héritier together.
• Joan DeJean, 2004, proposed all three authors.

As Joan DeJean tells us (p x-xi):

“In February 1695, Jean Donneau de Vise, the editor of Le Mercure galant, an early French newspaper and the richest source of information on the doings of the French court and the lifestyles of its rich and famous, called his female readers' attention to the short story of the month, an early version of Marquise-Marquis. It was, he said, written by “someone of [their] sex" and displayed “charm" and “intelligence," as well as all the “delicate wit" that, he argued, “only women possess" (12-13). This was not at all an unusual thing for Donneau de Vise to say: he stands out among early journalists for his consistent desire to advertise women's accomplishments — Le Mercure galant published many women writers and promoted women's writing—and to cover news of particular interest to female readers. The paper gave so much space to every aspect of la mode, for example, that it can be thought of as the beginning of the fashion press. The story that followed Donneau de Vise's introduction opens with a prologue in which its author identifies her-self as a woman and addresses her self to readers of“[her] sex, assuring them that they can always be sure when a work is written by a woman and listing all the ways in which her style is typical of women's writing in general.

Fast forward to August 1696. In that issue of Le Mercure galant, Donneau de Vise included a far more extensive version of Marquise-Marquis. He claimed that its author, identified once again as a woman, “had forgotten" to include certain parts the first time around (171). In the meantime, in February 1696, Donneau de Vise had published another story, “Sleeping Beauty" (“La Belle au bois dormant"), which he introduced in this way: 

“We owe this work to the same person who wrote the story of the little marquise"

—in other words. The Story of the Marquise-Marquis de Banneville (74). Here is where the mystery of the story's authorship begins. No one has ever believed that “Sleeping Beauty" was written by a woman; it has been included in every edition of Perrault’s tales. Indeed as soon as the first collection of those tales was published, Donneau de Vise sang its praises in the January 1697 issue of Le Mercure galant and told his readers that all those who had enjoyed “Sleeping Beauty" were sure to want to read the rest of Perrault's stories.”

Based on the similarities between the Banneville story and de Croisy’s posthumous memoirs, it is generally assumed that he contributed to the story by example or by text. However De Vise’s editorials suggest L'Héritier as the likely author, and as he also attributes “Sleeping Beauty” to her, we wonder how much of Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye was her work rather than her uncle’s. Further: it is possible that the similarities with de Croisy’s memoirs are because he drew up on the Banneville story, and, as several commentators have suggested, the Red Riding Hood story as well.